I mentioned ten years ago that I was thinking about letting my then young sons read a box of banged-up comic books that came from my youth.
I mean, I had some comics from my youth that were in pretty good shape which I bagged up and put into long, then short boxes. But I also had some that were banged up, were missing covers, or were sold to me after being remaindered–the price and issue number removed and returned to the publisher for refund, but the then unsaleable books packaged into poly bags and sold in bunches for the cost conscious ten year old comic consumer. Some of the comics were old Harvey comics which came from my mother’s youth, when her aunt had a box of comics for my aunts to read when they came to visit.
Not long after that post, I did end up letting them have access to those comics, and some time thereafter, they disappeared into the bedroom that they shared at the time.
This week, my youngest was supposed to be cleaning his room, but he ended up in his brother’s room and reclaimed the comics in a different box and returned them to me.
In the intervening decade, some comics have been added from things I’ve bought them, and some have been destroyed by children’s negligence.
But I’ve sorted through them. I’ve got a stack of books which have intact covers which, even though they’re very low grade, I might bag and put into the short boxes and add to the comic book spreadsheet. I’ve got a larger stack of comic books which are missing their covers but look to be narratively intact which I am thinking I will put into a bin for my grandchildren when (if) I have some and they’re old enough. And I’ve got a… well, pile of bits and pieces of comic books which I thought I would recycle, but heaven forfend! Of course, I cannot get rid of anything, so I’ve saved it for découpage projects I never get around to.
But, of course, I have to read the books in stacks one and two again myself first.
